Student senators elected, ready for issues

September 29, 2003

Tony Parra

The votes are tallied and the Eastern New Mexico University students selected 23 members for the student government to serve the 2003-2004 year.
There was a tie in one of the senate positions between Thomas Wortman and Lia Romero in the College of Education Department. There will be a voting session today between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. to break the tie.
The elections took place on Wednesday and Thursday and the results were announced on Friday.
Bob Cornelius, president of the student council, will work closely with the new senators.
“We deal with a variety of issues,” Cornelius said. “For example we are pushing for water conservation on campus through our lobbying committee. Last year our lobbying committee went before the state legislature and pushed to have better lighting and emergency phones on campus.”
Cornelius appointed Brian Stein as executive assistant; Anessa Scott to senate assistant; Jennifer Wootton to information director; and Stephanie Ramirez to office manager.
The number of students in each college determine how many representatives will be chosen out of that department.
For instance, the college of Liberal Arts and Sciences is the largest in student representation so the most elected officials come out of that college.
There were 640 students who voted.
Anton Iliuk earned 67 votes, the most of any senator.
Bob Seyller ran for a senate position in the Liberal Arts and Sciences and finished third in the voting, which earned him a position. The top eight vote-getters for the college of Liberal Arts earned positions for the senate because of the size. In contrast, the College of Fine Arts had only two positions to fill.
“I wanted to get a sense for what was going on (at ENMU) before I ran,” Seyller said about not running for senate last year. “I hope to make ENMU better. It’s just buildings on a campus if we don’t get students involved. We need to stay involved in campus activities instead of going home every weekend. It’s going to bring down ENMU if they don’t get involved.”
The first meeting of the 37th senate will take place at 5:30 p.m. today in the faculty lounge of the Campus Union Building.
“I was talking to Bob and it sounded like it was a good thing to do,” said new senator Luke Klingsmith, a senior majoring in special education. “It wouldn’t take too much time and I could learn what happens in senate meetings.”